Afterschool

The intricate relation between images and education is an old issue that can easily be dated back to the rise of modernity. Ever since, it has been argued that images might on one hand assist teachers in raising the new generation, but on the other might distract students by offering them mere entertainment instead of essential subject material. Today, with the omnipresence of screens in our daily life, this tension has become all the more tangible. Some may even start to wonder whether education, traditionally conceived as schooling, can still be achievable under these conditions.

The title Afterschool refers to a film by Antonio Campos, which depicted these new conditions very accurately. In the same way the book wants to take up this challenge and articulates in an affirmative manner what education still could mean in an era after school, and also what images might mean in such an era, both for teachers and education researchers. The contributors to this book respond to this process of digitization and present new and unexpected ways of making use of images in educational practice and research.